Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write histories in the form of accounts of the past. The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised in the philosophy of history as a question of epistemology. The study of historical method and writing is known as historiography.
Read more about Historical Method: External Criticism: Authenticity and Provenance, Internal Criticism: Historical Reliability, Synthesis: Historical Reasoning
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or method:
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (18891974)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]. He said he didnt know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidates coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (18591964)